1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to latching mechanisms for mounting devices within mounting holes, and, in particular, to latching mechanisms for retainers for organizing bundles of wires, fibers, and cables for telecommunications applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
A building entrance protector (BEP) enclosure houses the physical interface between the nodes of a local telecommunications network and a telecommunications cable. For example, a BEP enclosure may house the interface hardware between the telephones of an office building and an exterior telephone cable having a number of twisted copper pairs that carry the voice signals for those telephones. A BEP enclosure would typically be mounted in the basement or first floor of the office building. A BEP enclosure may also be used to house the interface hardware for systems based on fiber optical communications. Similarly, BEP enclosures may be used with telecommunications systems carrying signals other than just telephone voice signals.
A BEP enclosure provides two main functions: (1) it houses the hardware that provides connections between a cable and the individual nodes (e.g., telephones) of a local network; and (2) it houses the hardware that provides electrical isolation between the cable and the local network. Electrical isolation is intended to prevent any high voltages and/or high currents that may exist from time to time in the cable from reaching the local network. For example, a BEP enclosure will house isolation components designed to protect telephone users from lightning striking a telephone cable. Such electrical isolation is typically provided by 5-pin plug-in protectors that quickly connect signals to ground upon detection of sufficiently high voltages or currents.
Depending on the situation, it may be desirable to control the access that different users have to the different types of hardware housed in a BEP enclosure. For example, when a BEP enclosure is to be used in an office building, it may be desirable to provide operators of the office building with access to the connection hardware housed in the BEP enclosure, but not to the isolation hardware. In this way, the office-building operators would be able to adjust the distribution of telephone signals from the cable to the various offices in the building, while, at the same time, being prevented from disturbing the electrical isolation hardware housed in the BEP enclosure.
To achieve this access control, BEP enclosures typically have two or more chambers that house the different types of hardware. For example, isolation components may be housed in a first chamber, and connection components, in a second chamber. The BEP enclosure can then be configured to provide only limited access to the office-building operators, that is, access to the second chamber but not to the first chamber. Representatives of the telephone service company, on the other hand, would have access to both chambers.
FIGS. 1(a) and 1(b) show perspective and cross-sectional views, respectively, of the three basic parts of a typical BEP enclosure 100: the base 102, the mid layer 104, and the cover 106. The base is essentially a rectilinear box with a bottom, four side walls, and open on its top. The mid layer has four side walls with a mounting plane 108 perpendicular to the four side walls. The mid layer is adapted to be pivotally connected to the base at one side (110), and the cover is adapted to be pivotally connected to the mid layer at the other side (112). The interior of the base and the lower portion of the mid layer form an inner chamber 114 of the BEP enclosure, while the upper portion of the mid layer and the cover form an outer chamber 116 of the BEP enclosure. As such, the mounting plane of the mid layer forms both the top surface of the inner chamber and the bottom surface of the outer chamber.
Chamber access is typically controlled by the type of mechanism used to hold together the parts that form the chamber. For example, special screws can be used to seal a chamber thereby restricting access to only those individuals who have special tools designed to remove those special screws. Two such screws are KS-type screws and 216-type screws, which require special tools to remove. If a regular slotted or Philips-head screw is used to secure the chamber, then access will not be restricted because regular and Philips-head screw drivers are readily available.
In a typical BEP-enclosure application, isolation components are housed in the inner chamber, while connection components are housed in the outer chamber. In that case, each chamber will hold bundles of copper wires (e.g, twisted pairs), optical fibers, or coaxial cables, corresponding to the different signals carried by the telecommunications cable. In particular, one or more bundles leading from the cable to the isolation components will be housed within the inner chamber, while one or more bundles leading from the connection components to the local network will be housed within the outer chamber. It is desirable to gather these bundles within retainers mounted in the chambers in order to maintain an orderly arrangement of the bundles within the chambers.